SONG OF THE REDWOOD-TREE

A CALIFORNIA song,

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A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air,

A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing,

A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.

Farewell my brethren

Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighbouring waters, My time has ended, my term has come.

Along the northern coast,

Just back from the rock-bound shore and the caves,

In the saline air from the sea in the Mendocino country, With the surge for base and accompaniment low and hoarse, With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven by

strong arms,

Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in the redwood forest dense,

I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting.

The choppers heard not, the camp shanties echoed not,

The quick-ear'd teamsters and chain and jack-screw men heard not,

As the wood-spirits came from their haunts of a thousand years to join the refrain,

But in my soul I plainly heard.

Murmuring out of its myriad leaves,

Down from its lofty top rising two hundred feet high,

Out of its stalwart trunk and limbs, out of its foot-thick bark, That chant of the seasons and time, chant not of the past only but the future

You untold life of me,

And all you venerable and innocent joys,

Perennial hardy life of me with joys 'mid rain and many a

summer sun,

And the white snows and night and the wild winds;

O the great patient rugged joys, my soul's strong joys unreck'd

by man

(For know I bear the soul befitting me, I too have consciousness, identity,

And all the rocks and mountains have, and all the earth),
Joys of the life befitting me and brothers mine,

Our time, our term has come.

Nor yield we mournfully majestic brothers,
We who have grandly fill'd our time;

With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight,
We welcome what we wrought for through the past,
And leave the field for them.

For them predicted long,

For a superber race, they too to grandly fill their time,
For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings!

In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks, Shasta,
Nevadas,

These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys, far Yosemite,

To be in them absorb'd, assimilated.

Then to a loftier strain,

Still prouder, more ecstatic rose the chant,

As if the heirs, the deities of the West,

Joining with master-tongue bore part.

Not wan from Asia's fetiches,

Nor red from Europe's old dynastic slaughter-house

(Area of murder-plots of thrones, with scent left yet of wars

and scaffolds everywhere),

But come from Nature's long and harmless throes, peacefully builded thence,

These virgin lands, lands of the Western shore,

To the new culminating man, to you, the empire new,

You promis'd long, we pledge, we dedicate.

You occult deep volitions,

You average spiritual manhood, purpose of all, pois'd on yourself, giving not taking law,

You womanhood divine, mistress and source of all, whence

life and love and aught that comes from life and love, You unseen moral essence of all the vast materials of America

(age upon age working in death the same as life), You that, sometimes known, oftener unknown, really shape and mould the New World) adjusting it to Time and Space,

You hidden national will lying in your abysms, conceal'd but ever alert,

You past and present purposes tenaciously pursued, maybe unconscious of yourselves,

nswerv'd by all the passing errors, p rturbations of the surface;

You vital, universal, deathless germs, beneath all creeds, arts, statutes, literatures,

Here build your homes for good, establish here, these areas entire, lands of the Western shore,

We pledge, we dedicate to you.

For man of you, your characteristic race,

Here may he hardy, sweet, gigantic grow, here tower proportionate to Nature,

Here climb the vast pure spaces unconfined, uncheck'd by wall or roof,

Here laugh with storm or sun, here joy, here patiently inure, Here heed himself, unfold himself (not others' formulas heed), here fill his time,

To duly fall, to aid, unreck'd at last,

To disappear, to serve.

Thus on the northern coast,

In the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains, and the music of choppers' axes,

The falling trunk and limbs, the crash, the muffled shriek, the groan,

Such words combined from the redwood-tree, as of voices ecstatic, ancient and rustling,

The century-lasting, unseen dryads, singing, withdrawing, All their recesses of forests and mountains leaving,

From the Cascade range to the Wahsatch, or Idaho far, or Utah,

To the deities of the modern henceforth yielding,

The chorus and indications, the vistas of coming humanity, the settlements, features all,

In the mendocino woods I caught.

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The flashing and golden pageant of California,

The sudden and gorgeous drama, the sunny and ample lands, The long and varied stretch from Puget Sound to Colorado

south,

Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healthier air, valleys and mountain cliffs,

The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent, cyclic chemistry,

The slow and steady ages plodding, the unoccupied surface ripening, the rich ores forming beneath;

At last the New arriving, assuming, taking possession,
A swarming and busy race settling and organising everywhere,
Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out
to the whole world,

To India and China and Australia and the thousand island paradises of the Pacific,

Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers, the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery, And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold.

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But more in you than these, lands of the Western shore (These but the means, the implements, the standing-ground), I see in you, certain to come, the promise of thousands of years, till now deferr'd,

Promis'd to be fulfill'd, our common kind, the race.

The new society at last, proportionate to Nature,

In man of you, more than your mountain peaks or stalwar trees imperial,

In woman more, far more, than all your gold or vines, o even vital air.

Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared,
I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal,
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America,
heir of the past so grand,

To build a grander future

A SONG FOR OCCUPATIONS

A SONG for occupations!

In the labour of engines and trades and the labour of fields I find the developments,

And find the eternal meanings.

Workmen and Workwomen!

Were all educations practical and ornamental well display'd out of me, what would it amount to?

Were I as the head teacher, charitable proprietor, wise statesman, what would it amount to?

Were I to you as the boss employing and paying you, would that satisfy you?

'The learn'd, virtuous, benevolent, and the usual terms,

A man like me and never the usual terms.

Neither a servant nor a master I,

I take no sooner a large price than a small price, I will have my own whoever enjoys me,

I will be even with you and you shall be even with me.

If you stand at work in a shop, I stand as nigh as the nighest in the same shop,

If you bestow gifts on your brother or dearest friend I demand as good as your brother or dearest friend,

If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome,

If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake,

If you remember your foolish and outlaw'd deeds, do you think, I cannot remember my own foolish and outlaw'd deeds?

If you carouse at the table I carouse at the opposite side of the table,

If you meet some stranger in the streets and love him or her, why I often meet strangers in the street and love them. Why what have you thought of yourself?

Is it you then that thought yourself less?